We’re heading back to the UK for our 12th year lineup of Ontario artists at Canada House during The Great Escape (TGE) 2025 in Brighton, UK!

As the third-largest recorded music market in the world after the US and Japan, the UK is a key destination for emerging talent — and The Great Escape is its premiere festival for discovering new music. With 500 up-and-coming artists performing in over 30 walkable venues across Brighton, the city transforms into a global stage for fresh sounds.

Each year, industry professionals from around the world flock to TGE to scout new talent and attend the conference, which runs alongside the showcases and features panels, keynote speeches, networking opportunities, and more. https://greatescapefestival.com/

From May 13–16, MusicOntario will showcase five outstanding independent acts from Ontario at The Green Door Store, connecting them with international delegates and music fans alike.

MusicOntario gratefully acknowledges the support of FACTOR Canada and Ontario Creates in making this opportunity possible.

Ontario artists who’ve graced the stage for our TGE showcase include The Beaches, Billiane, Haviah Mighty, Aysanabee, STORRY, Arkells, Hannah Georgas, The Wooden Sky, and more. This year’s Ontario lineup includes:

BONNIE TRASH (Hand Drawn Dracula, repped by James Meija)
Bonnie Trash is the project of twin sisters Emmalia and Sarafina Bortolon-Vettor, wedding post-punk's steeley-eyed austerity to goth rock's brooding grandeur. Rather than fashioning nightmares into reality, the band paints reality as a nightmare; rife with pain, suffering, and gothic theatre.

Like their forebears Joy Division, Black Sabbath, or John Carpenter, Bonnie Trash understands that everyday atrocities haunt the periphery of our lives. A black cloud looming on the edge of our vision. Curses abound. You can’t ward them off. You’d best make an unholy racket.

Where their first full length, Malocchio (2022), shrouded Bonnie Trash’s nightmares in dusky dreamlike reverb, Mourning You (2025) is vivid and immediate. Mourning You is less a post-mortem fantasia than a sudden, swift dagger to the heart. This is sorrow not as a lingering bruise, but a gushing wound.

Bonnie Trash has performed at renowned festivals across Canada, and has shared the stage with TRAITRS, Chastity, Dilly Dally, Bria Salmena, and The OBGMs. In 2025, they embarked on their first UK and USA tour, and played to a sold-out crowd at Reeperbahn Festival in Hamburg. They have been featured in Guitar World, Metal Hammer, Classic Rock Magazine, Exclaim!, BrooklynVegan, and The Line of Best Fit.

https://www.handdrawndracula.com/artists/bonnie-trash/

CHARLIE HOUSTON (Without Contrast, repped by Mikey Lavi)
Growing up in Toronto, Canada, Houston was the youngest of four siblings. When she was eight years old, her dad, a fellow musician who used to play in local garage punk bands, gifted her a guitar. Whereas many singer-songwriters got their start performing covers, Houston remained focused on “making something that didn’t exist before.”

She also began learning how to produce for herself on GarageBand, which felt like “unlocking a whole other world.” Houston’s music has always felt technical in its nuance and attention to detail, where melody and topline interlace themselves seamlessly, and the dreamy sonic exterior almost makes you forget what’s lurking underneath.

Big After I Die (2025), Charlie's debut record, is a 9-song exploration of the precarious and often surreal experience of learning who you are while transitioning between phases of life.

Although she just graduated with a degree in philosophy, the record is her own personal thesis examining her search to find greater meaning in life: the omnipresent, existential questions that she had been fixated on for so long. It also signifies a rebirth, of faith in herself and her intuition.https://www.charliehouston.com

FEATURETTE (Division Eleven Music, repped by Jordan Howard)
FEATURETTE is the soundtrack to your sleepless nights. Their music is all nerve endings—razor-edged electronics, blown-out percussion, and vocals that feel like a confession. Fronted by Lexie Jay—whose voice shapeshifts from a whisper to a weapon—the project is driven by producer and multi-instrumentalist Marc Koecher and drummer-architect Jon Fedorsen. Together they build worlds that lure you in with precision, and leave you wrecked on impact.
www.featurettemusic.com

The OBGMS (Repped by Densil McFarlane)
The OBGMs fuse punk, rock, and hip-hop into an electrifying sound that’s garnered critical acclaim for “The Ends.” Known for their ferocious live performances, they’ve shared stages with heavyweights like Alexisonfire, Death From Above, PUP, and Billy Talent. Their explosive energy and genre-defying approach make them a force to be

reckoned with, poised to leave an indelible mark on the music scene and captivate audiences worldwide with their raw, unapologetic style.
https://theobgms.com/

STATUS-NON-STATUS (Sonic Unyon Records, repped by Wayne Petti)
Big Changes emerges from a moment when childhood innocence gives way to the responsibilities and anxieties of adulthood, a tension mirrored in Adam Sturgeon’s own evolution as an artist. The Anishinaabe musician has continually transformed—shedding old monikers, reclaiming his heritage, and shaping new projects such as Status/Non-Status and OMBIIGIZI. Across these shifts, one constant remains: Sturgeon treats each artistic endeavor like family, carrying the weight of provider, protector, and father while navigating a world that often feels on the brink.

Created in a converted church home studio in London, Ontario, Big Changes reflects both domestic routine and societal upheaval. The songs confront the everyday realities of living in a neighbourhood worn down by inequality, while also grappling with Sturgeon’s lifelong experience of duality as a mixed Indigenous person. Tracks like “Big Changes,” “Bones,” and the two-part “Bitumen Eyes” move between street-level observation and generational reflection, confronting colonial scars, environmental exploitation, and the complex inheritance passed to Indigenous youth. Throughout, Sturgeon holds tension without resolving it—acknowledging uncertainty while searching for resilience.

Musically, the album stays true to Status/Non-Status’s raw, intuitive energy even as it grows more deliberate and refined. Collaborations with artists such as Julie Doiron, Kevin Drew, Rachel McLean, and Colleen “Coco” Collins deepen the record’s sense of community, weaving together noise-rock grit, power-pop brightness, and reflective acoustic textures. Ultimately, Big Changes is an act of collective endurance—an album about survival through connection, about making noise together when the world feels fragile, and about finding harmony in the shared struggle to move forward.
https://www.statusnonstatus.com/

PRE-TGE SHOWCASE IN LONDON, UK
**by invitation only**

MENNO VERSTEEG (Royal Mountain Records, repped by Conor Mackie & Dina Young)
MENNO VERSTEEG (the leader of Hollerado and a 1/4 of supergroup Anyway Gang) just released « Why We Run », out via Royal Mountain Records. With literally thousands of shows in over twenty countries, ten Top 10 singles, a Gold Record and a #1 Alternative Single, as highlights on his musical resume, VERSTEEG has seen and done his fair share. Yet, « Why We Run » marks the first time he's releasing his music under his own name. Over the course of « Why We Run »'s 12 songs, VERSTEEG is at his lyrical best and most musically diverse. With the soft indie folk of debut single « Fish Out Of Water » featuring Doug Paisley, the alt-country rambunctiousness of « Change A Tire » or the contemplative album closer « A Light On In You », VERSTEEG channels his wide musical knowledge and pulls from every corner of his impressive career. The overarching result is a record that is an artist at his most honest, most vulnerable and most exciting, twenty years in. https://www.royalmountainrecords.com/menno-versteeg

FEATURETTE (Division Eleven Music, repped by Jordan Howard)
FEATURETTE is the soundtrack to your sleepless nights. Their music is all nerve endings—razor-edged electronics, blown-out percussion, and vocals that feel like a confession. Fronted by Lexie Jay—whose voice shapeshifts from a whisper to a weapon—the project is driven by producer and multi-instrumentalist Marc Koecher and drummer-architect Jon Fedorsen. Together they build worlds that lure you in with precision, and leave you wrecked on impact.
www.featurettemusic.com